Well, frankly, I think the distinction between “disabled person” and “person with disabilities” is a pretty silly one. But I’m willing to recognize that I might just not get it. And even if I’m 100% right, it’s at worst just that, a pretty silly distinction. It is not some warning sign of the impending though police. It is not proof that liberals are destroying the very substance of our nation. And it certainly pales into insignificance compared with the actual substantial difficulties that people with disabilities continue to face day in and day out.
What you are missing is that certain approaches to problems can unintentionally make the problem worse especially in the long term (non-assimilation policies are a great example of that). The other part that you are missing is that problems of all sizes can be worked on in parallel rather than serial. It isn’t logical to say that police have to stop writing traffic tickets and investigating petty robberies until all murder is completely abolished because the latter will never happen. We have enough people that can be allocated proportionally to each type of problem to help solve all of them every though it is unlikely that any of them will ever be truly eradicated.
This is a criticism that people from all political persuasions are guilty of simply because most people are lazy, like trendy rather than truly effective ideas (especially ones that impact them personally) and only care about a small subset of the problems that exist (again, those are usually the ones most relevant to them personally often based on nothing but illogical emotions).
Political Correctness is a prime example of this type of intellectual laziness combined with an air of superiority and condescension. That combination is like a fat worm to a fish for upper middle class white people that like to fancy themselves as part of the neo-intellectual social movement. All they have to do is change some words around, insist that other people follow their new rules and then castigate others when they balk at it. It is a perfect plan because it requires little effort on their part because they were already planning to do something just like that anyway.
Real change like tutoring poor school children individually for free, becoming a genuinely nice person to everyone consistently or doing menial chores for the poor elderly are much harder. Some people do those things as well but they are much more rare. You will never get a pat on the back from me for doing a charity walk with your friends on a nice Sunday afternoon or ‘calling people out’ for innocuous speech. If you are that serious about an issue, do something personally meaningful for someone or take on some truly difficult charity work that makes a real difference in individual lives.
PC STARTED as a way to solve real problems. Now it exists to solve a “problem” that adults learn to get over by the time they enter the real world: being offended.
Hate is a problem. Discrimination is a problem. Someone saying something that offends you is a problem in the sense that someone taking a parking space you were waiting for is a problem.
That being said, it doesn’t hurt to educate people on how not to be offensive. Where it crosses the line is when people get disproportionate punishment for offending.
So being offensive is inherently harmless, to the person offended and to society at large? So someone who says racist things 24/7 but takes no racist action, or someone who’s never committed a crime but constantly says rape victims were generally “asking for it” do absolutely no real harm to anyone, ever?
Absolutely. That’s kinda why we have a 1st amendment, ya know? If real harm was caused by offense, we’d make it against the law.
Yes, there is. It’s a term coined on a snark board to make fun of me the same way they come up with names to make fun of everyone there. It came not because of stupidity but naivete. In fact, I was mostly called a nerd–you know, smart but no common sense.
Unfortunately, it’s now being used as a way to avoid actually coming up with counterarguments to what I say. It’s also often used in conjunction of coming up with the most off-the-wall assinine interpretation of what I say, followed by mockery.
I mean, notice that jsgoddess directly agreed with me? Yet you don’t see anyone making fun of her or calling her stupid. This sort of thing happens a lot. I will have the same opinion as many other people in the thread, but I’m the one singled out. It’s just become fashionable amongst a certain subset to call me stupid or say I’m always wrong, no matter whether I’m making a valid point or not.
(Consider that it was most recently used to argue that asking Zeldar why he likes lists would get you warned if you did it outside the Pit. It was so ridiculous, I actually posted that question in ATMB of all places. No Warnings, no Mod Note, nothing. But it’s more important to attack me than to actually care about being right.)
The nickname has outlived its usefulness, other than as an insult and a shibboleth. And it doesn’t do you any favors in your argument that PC has gone too far. It is, after all, a portmanteau of my username with a slur against the mentally disabled.
What is the “counterargument” to “no one uses this word to mean what it actually means and instead is just using it as a racist dogwhistle?” I think “those of us who are more intelligent than you use many words that you may not be familiar with” more than covers it.
You’re over thinking it. It really is cuz you are a big tard.
jsgoddess isn’t a big tard.
It’s a perfectly apt descriptor as you are truly a big tard.
I’m not sure what that has to do with anything I said. Frankly, I don’t think non-assimilation policies are either PC or not PC (although I agree they’re vaguely comparable in some ways). They’re a policy that people of good intention can argue about and disagree with, and which can be implemented well or poorly. They’re not really the same as deciding that we are now calling Native Americans “Indigenous Americans” instead.
That’s definitely true. And when there are actually serious problems caused by Political Correctness, I’m not telling anyone not to acknowledge or deal with them. For instance, I can well believe that there are people on college campuses who feel that they can not openly express their political beliefs without getting shunned. And unless those beliefs are actively white supremacist or something like that, that should not be the case.
But going back to the analogy with false-rape-accusations, it’s clear that false rape accusations do happen, and do cause real harm. If someone is concerned with that issue, or has dealt with it and wants to talk about it, hey, great, it’s a real problem. What I would find troublesome is someone who just constantly brings it up, every time there is any rape mentioned they’re always going on and on about poor men who have to face this horrible problem, etc. Yes, it’s a real problem. But it’s a real problem that is an adjunct to a VASTLY larger other real problem, and for someone to constantly harp about the smaller problem without even acknowledging the larger real problem is disturbing.
Can you give me some examples of precisely what you have in mind here?
I agree that people put an inordinate amount of effort into weirdly symbolic things like breast cancer awareness walks… although some of them also raise a lot of money for actual helpful research. But again, what does that have to do with Political Correctness?
(Getting mad at someone because it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month and they are not wearing a pink ribbon… THAT would be PC.)
As for “calling people out” for innocuous speech, again, can you be more specific?
I think the Professor Tim Hunt case was pretty disgraceful. A silly self deprecating joke and he was hounded out his profession by a Twitter lynching mob with zero regard to his history. Same with the ESA shirt guy.
Wow. I’m ashamed that I tried even moderately not to “lose your respect” earlier in the thread. What’s that respect worth? Was it just random action that you finally responded to me with real arguments, and to BigT with insult and dismissal for saying essentially the same thing?
To clarify, it seemed to me that most of the “hostility” actually came from the MSM, and not really social media.
So then you clearly disagree with the OP of this thread.
I’m not sure if that makes you a “bigot” or not - may depend on how you define “whining”. 
I disagree.
There’s a valid reason the false rape accusations are frequently brought up in connection with the actual rape problem. And that is because the direction society has been moving in response to the actual rape problem is to weaken protections for accused rapists, and to make the default assumption that all people accused of rape are guilty and to put the burden of proof on the accused to disprove it. In this context, when the justification for this trend is the horrible problem of actual rape, it’s completely appropriate to point out that this is in some sense a zero sum game, and by easing the problems for some victims you’re exacerbating it for others.
IME, this or something similar is generally the context in which the false accusations issue is brought up.
Sorry to hear this. The fact of the matter is some folks on here are worth the time to have a decent legit conversation; some are worthy of immediate derision. This guy is latter. See his comment in the Zeldar thread. Or not.
I’m pretty sympathetic about BigT. Fact is that he’s apparently not too bright, but he does seem to put some effort into thinking things through and he can sometimes express thoughts which represent legitimate viewpoints and are of some value. Problem is that they frequently come off as self-contained essays that represent the Great Thoughts of BigT, which are randomly attached to something related to the general subject which caught his eye as a suitable place for his comments, and he puts little to no effort into trying to understand what other people are saying, whether the initial remarks he’s addressing or whatever people might say in response to his. So you’re right that it’s not worth trying to have any sort of intelligent exchange with him. And if you consider that he is very frequently being self-righteous and obnoxious in the process, it’s hard to be too worked up about his apparent concerns about the same directed at him.
But all that said, I’m not sure that the BigTard stuff adds all that much.
Fair enough, thanks for the input. Truly. I come from a different place. I don’t necessarily find that all my posts have to have a big deep meaning that furthers and cements the conversation in whatever position I have taken, especially in the Pit. Sometimes I converse and have a really legit conversation with people who I feel I can have a real legit conversation with.Then there are others who just need snark, for the sake of snark. I’ve been the recipient of it. I’m ok with that.
The “shirt guy” did get a buttload of complaints from social media but no, the Twitterati did not call for Sir Tim’s head. Mostly they just mocked him via the hashtag you cite. Pretty funny too.
I agreed with part of your post and disagreed with other parts.
And people call me stupid all the time. A lot of the time, I deserve it.
You were hateful in the Zeldar thread, by the way. You sometimes, maybe even often, have smart things to say and then you’ll be hateful or act like a martyr for no reason. I don’t think you’re an idiot, but I do think you are quite often a jerk. And the truth is most of us are very capable of being colossal assholes at times. And we’re liable to get called out for it. If we then decide that we’re martyrs, no one will like us.
If you’re going to be a jerk, don’t be a martyr. If you’re going to be a martyr… actually, don’t be a martyr. Jerks are at least occasionally interesting. Martyrs are just ooky.
And I should’ve taken some breaths before commenting as I did. I too have history with some posters who I now choose to mostly ignore except for short rejoinders (full of snark and sometimes bile). As far as I can remember, I’ve never had any exchange with BigT on any subject; if I’m mistaken, then the past exchange wasn’t memorable to me.
And sometimes, it’s just entertaining to be snarky or dismissive in the BBQ Pit.
However, I do want to point out that it’s also rewarding to grit your teeth and try and engage with someone who has infuriated or disgusted you in the past, when they are directly engaging an argument. Debaser, with whom I’ve directly clashed in the past, chose to respond to my offensive post to him with actual engagement, and I feel it was a worthwhile discussion. There’s another example in this thread, but I’m -eh- having just… a hard time… remembering who else has been involved in that…
Any way, my heartfelt advice (which I try but frequently fail to take myself) is to limit the snark responses to just the snark-worthy posts and either ignore or respond in kind to thoughtful and better constructed posts. You’ll feel better.